As a wrecker truck carried a Dodge pickup truck with a camper attached to a parking lot behind the Larimer County jail in Fort Collins, several inmates watched with trepidation.

Rod F. told an informant in a cell next to him that he had beaten a man inside that home-made camper with a Viking painted on the back door and that he was worried he was going to get arrested for murder.

Steven Kirk, courtesy of his sister Lynell Nelson

Rod F. was so afraid he was sawing through the bar of his jail cell that night.

That was in Oct. 6, 1977.

Even though the informant told police what he knew and another inmate corroborated his story, the suspect and other accomplices have never been arrested for the death in June of 1977 of Steven Meredith Kirk.

Key evidence in the case including the murder weapon and a pair of underwear that one of the killers left inside the camper were thrown away more than a quarter century ago.

Kirk’s sister, Lynell Nelson, said she believes the case can still be solved and hopes it will before she dies. She has been in cancer treatment this summer while calling Colorado authorities to see if she can jump-start an investigation.

Kirk Mitchell is a general assignment reporter at The Denver Post who focuses on criminal justice stories. He began working at the newspaper in 1998, after writing for newspapers in Mesa, Ariz., and Twin Falls, Idaho, and The Associated Press in Salt Lake City. Mitchell first started writing the Cold Case blog in Fall 2007, in part because Colorado has more than 1,400 unsolved homicides.